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HISTORY - 25TH OCTOBER 1938, AIR DISASTER FOR AUSTRALIA’S WINE INDUSTRY.

An aircraft carrying leading members of the Australian Wine Industry amongst other prominent citizens came to grief on Mount Dandenong to the east of Melbourne on the afternoon of 25th October 1938.

South Australian wine industry executives Thomas M. Hardy, Hugo Gramp and Sydney Hill-Smith who were travelling to a meeting of the Federal Viticultural Council in Canberra.

On 25th Oct 1978 to mark the 40th anniversary of the disaster a cairn and bronze plaque were unveiled at the crash area. The plaque was placed by the Mt Dandenong Historical Society with assistance from G Gramp & Sons, Thos. Hardy & Sons, S Smith & Son, Australian Federation of Air Pilots and the Forests Commission of Victoria.

Other prominent people on the flight were:
Mr C A Hawker who was an MHR for a South Australian electorate, barristers L S Abrahams KC and A C Gain, with solicitors L W Shirley and J I Massie, and actuary G H Goddard were returning to Sydney after after appearing for the British Medical Association at the Royal Commission on national health insurance in Perth.

The Douglas DC-2 was a advanced aircraft for its time, made a regular scheduled flight from Adelaide's Parafield Aerodrome to Melbourne's Essendon Airport on Tuesday, 25th October 1938.

The flight was scheduled to arrive at Essendon was 1.45 pm but because of inadaquate navigation equipment both at Essendon and on the aircraft it accidentally overflew Essendon in low cloud and as it only took 8 or 9 minutes to get from Essendon to Mt Dandenong, it failed to clear the summit of Mt Dandenong at Burke's Lookout by just 170 ft.

All 18 on board were killed. There was nothing wrong with the aircraft itself. The Air Accident Investigation Committee's report described the accident as involving "greater loss of life than any other that has occurred in Australia and one of the most serious in the history of regular air transport".

As a result, Australia implemented major improvements to aircraft navigation and heralded the birth of Australia's system of Air Traffic Control - an airways system that would not only be unique in the world, but in time would come to be regarded as the safest in the world.

Reference: Air Crash Volume 1, 1921 - 1939 by Macarthur Job published in 1991.ISBN 0 9587978 9 7

Contributed by Richard Honess